1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a vehicle rear monitoring system provided with a camera for capturing an image of an area to the rear of a vehicle.
2. Description of Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-166624 (JP 2009-166624 A), for example, describes a vehicle rear monitoring system that extracts, as a display image, an image of a relatively narrow area from an image of an area to the rear of a vehicle captured by a rear camera while the vehicle is traveling forward, enlarges this display image to the size comparable to an inner rearview mirror, and displays this enlarged display image on a display.
However, when the display area of the display apparatus that displays the vehicle rear image is fixed, there may be cases in which the size of the display of the vehicle rear image is not appropriate depending on the traveling situation. For example, if the display of the vehicle rear image is too large, it may be annoying to a driver when traveling forward, or if the display of the vehicle rear image is too small, the image may be difficult to visually recognize when the vehicle is traveling backward.